Petras comment here made me thinking about baking this years Easter pinze with sweet starter. I already had a spelt variant in my mind and so I decided to combine both ideas. To keep the pinze moist, I replace the milk with some cream and reduced the amount of butter. Cream has not only a positive effect on the crumb, it is although good if you plan to let the pinze rise over night in the fridge, as the cream will not harden in the cold as butter would do. So the Easter Pinze can rise unaffected and it is easy to serve a oven fresh bread for easter breakfast.
As the dough contains a bit more fat (from the cream) I added some more egg yolk, too. This adds a nice yellow hue to crust and crumb, which is very nice especially on rainy Easter Sundays like it was this year. The pale green eggs in the background of the pictures are from my uncles hens, which belong to the so called “Easter eggers”, a variety of chicken which carries a special gen for a blue to green stained egg shell. So I get a perfect green Easter egg without staining 🙂
Here is –as I promised – the first spelt recipe (of hopefully many more). It is a variation of my brioche recipe, but with more egg yolk and a little water roux to increase the amount of liquid in the dough. A 
Whenever we spent our vacation in nothern Germany, I have to buy something I have troubles to find in the Rhineland: Steel cut oats! I like them very much, not for the kale stew like it is typical in North Germany, but for making porridge or baking bread. A porridge is such a good addition to a bread, adding some bite and a good deal of moisture and helping to keep the bread fresh for a long time. Especially for spelt bread it is a good addition as spelt has the tendency to bake dry without added soaker.
I had a nice email exchange with a reader some time ago. She just had started her own sourdough starter and had some questions about it. One was how to replace the bought dried sourdough with her own one. She mailed me the recipe and I adjust it so that it is sole leavend by sourdough. To ensure that the sourdough is strong enough, it is fed twice. I although added a soaker for seeds, to ensure they can take up enough water. As I changed much of the handling as well, add the end there are just the same ingredients but a complete different recipe. But it is worth while as it yields an aromatic, moist bread with a well balanced mild soudough flavour.
Tired, but happy I look back on the last week. Tired because I came back very late Sunday night just to leave again on early monday to morning to a mass spectrometry training in Frankfurt. Luckily there was not as much snow as forecasted and all trains were in time. Thinking on the bread festival in Berlin makes me still smiling, as it was such a good experience. I’m very happy that I met some of my Readers there!
Relaxed and in good company was our start into 2016. I hope, you landed good in the new year as well!
In August we spent a weekend in the beautiful Swabia. A part of my family has its roots there and I always enjoy being there. Eating some pretzels is then a “Must” of course. When we stop at a bakerie in Schwäbisch Hall, I spotted a roll made with some Emmer and Quark (Curd). But sadly the last one was already sold when it was my turn. So I bought pretzels and Briegels instead. But the idea was fixed in my head. And soon afterwards I recipe began to form in my head.